‘Arthur MacKenzie is quite right.’ Isabel slices through a potato. Her voice has that clipped, frigid tone with which Harriet is all too familiar. She has brought disgrace upon the family, and her mother – silent and tight-lipped while Inspector MacKenzie was in the house – is about to unleash the full torrent of her fury. The servants, sensing something is brewing, have wisely vacated the room. Harriet braces herself for what will come.

Isabel remains contained, for the moment. The longer she holds on to her anger, the more intense and vicious the outburst will be when it comes.

‘He won’t say it in so many words, but he believes you have been allowed to run wild. He believes’ – she makes a second slice though the potato, as though she wishes only to dissect it rather than eat it – ‘that we, your father and I, have lost control of you.’

Nothing that Harriet can say will make the situation better for any of them. She had, albeit unconsciously, walked out of Selfridges with two imitation pearl necklaces in her coat. The store walker had followed her for several yards and then, once she had witnessed enough to believe that Harriet had intended to steal them, ran to call the male colleague who apprehended her.

Harriet had apologised profusely and offered to pay for the necklaces immediately – not that she wanted them – but there had been something of a fuss. The staff at Selfridges had decided to call the police. One of the store walkers had read of the spate of shoplifting in the larger department stores, of the raid at Debenham and Freebody a little further along Oxford Street, and believed that they had apprehended ‘the Jewel of the Borough’ – despite Harriet’s protestations to the contrary. The senior manager judged that a thief of such notoriety, who had been written of in the newspapers, at least warranted a telephone call to Scotland Yard.

There was no talk of prosecution or any sort of trial, of course. As she had stood, weeping quietly into her handkerchief, Arthur MacKenzie had smoothed matters over with the staff at Selfridges. He had talked of a ‘misunderstanding’ and of there being ‘no intention of criminality’ before escorting her home. He had spoken to her most unkindly in the motor car, and she had been forced to endure his criticisms of her attitude and her misbehaviour as well as his scolding about the necklaces.

‘And I am inclined to agree with him,’ her mother continues. ‘This ridiculous need to work in an office, your fascination with common thieves, the clothes that you wear, your hair…’ She begins to slice another potato, having carved the first into several slender pieces and abandoned it. ‘I said that no good would come of it.’ This last comment is addressed to Gerald, who is the only one who appears capable of eating.